Episode 276 - Time management, Deadlines and Organisation
Jun 20, 2016
For Quackcast 276 we had a discussion about the topics of time management, organisation and deadlines- all things essential to the practitioners of webcomics, and even more-so to people involved in webcomic collaborations! This is tricky stuff to handle, you have to balance your webcomicing with your other life activities as well as audience expectation for updates! And as you go on it gets harder and harder to stick with self imposed deadlines, so how do you combat that? Well one way is to make a Patreon account so people will put money towards you updating, That can make an excellent incentive to stick to a deadline, when there's money involved! Collaborations can be easy or hard to keep alive, as long as everyone is equally eager to take part and everyone wants it to succeed then you're good, if not then your group project needs a good leader: not someone who WANTS to be a leader, rather someone who's dedicated to getting the project DONE and needs to be the leader to make that happened, sort of like my role at Drunk Duck. They need to be willing and able to coordinate people and tell them what to do, handle their strengths and weaknesses right to get the work done. The last part to remember is contingencies for when things go wrong! What are your safeguards? i.e. buffers, finishing early so you've got extra time to work on the project if it needs it, have backup people lined up to do work for you, filler art at the ready, guest strips, maybe even simplified techniques or just posting line art instead. How do YOU stick to deadlines (if you do), how do you handle time management and organisation with your comics and collaborators? Gunwallace's theme music this week was Z74's Star Knights. It's An operatic swarm of hornets on a massed bombing run over enemy territory.
Topics and Show Notes
Topics and shownotes
Featured comic:
Torn Vines - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Torn_Vines/
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Banes - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
Tantz Aerine - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Without_Moonlight/
Featured music:
Z74's Star Knights - http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Star_Knights/, by Z74, rated E.
Episode 269 - Historical Accuracy VS Story Needs
May 2, 2016
Never let historical accuracy get in the way of a good story… at least that's what Bravo proposes. We stole his thought provoking forum post subject for the topic of this Quackcast. This is how Bravo goes on to explain it: “So how do feel about that? Should exact adherence to the historical record be allowed to wreck your wonderful fiction? If so how much dramatic license is too much? What are your favorite examples of how they got it wrong and how they got it right? And what if just a touch more research would have revealed that the historical story was better than what the fiction writers concocted? How tragic is that? And what about the usage of known historical mythology/hoax as in the Da Vinci code?” The frisson between story requirements and known historical record is pretty interesting. In Hollywood the former wins out EVERY single time and usually it doesn't result in a better story anyway, but as we discuss in the Quackcast there are OTHER reasons than simple bad writing choices for not sticking to the real story and trying to hammer everything into the Hero's Journey template.
Episode 257 - Accents in Comics
Feb 8, 2016
Using accents and different languages in comics can be a challenge, or at least a challenge to represent. Some people will actually have their text IN a different language or even a made up language in the case of aliens, and they'll have translations in a footnote. Some will use pointed brackets to represent the different language, some will use different fonts, and some won't bother showing that there is a different language being spoken at all. We spoke to Tantz Aerine and Pitface about this because that's something they both have to tackle in Brave Resistance and Tantz's solo comic Without Moonlight because it's very central to the plot: Tantz uses different colours for the languages. Pitface phonetically represents different accents in her comic Putrid Meat quite expertly. However, there can be challenges to phonetic representation when you get it wrong, most frequently in the case of Irish and Scottish accents! This was inspired by a newspost by Hippievan! Listen ad enjoy Gunwallace's audio interpretation of Aidana. VERY Pink Floyd!
Episode 256 - Using and creating weapons in fiction
Feb 1, 2016
Tantz Aerine, Banes and Ozoneocean discuss the topic of using and creating weapons in fiction and some of the pitfalls involved- all the things you can easily do wrong and do better! Stuff like using overly specialised weapons in too general a role, like giant swords where they'd be next to useless, or tricked out assault rifles with way too many things hooked onto them so they're oversized and weight a ton- also copying ideas and tropes about weapons usage without understanding why the exist and in the process making many of the same mistakes as others have in the past.
Episode 194 - Adapted Adaptations
Nov 24, 2014
This week the topic of our Quackcast was inspired buy my Friday newspost where I talked about how we relate to adaptions of created properties (fave comics or books turned into movies etc), and some of the challenges involved in creating adaptions. i.e. Hollywood will often try to create a sure fire hit by adapting an already successful property (like Lord Of The Rings) into a movie. That property has massive fame and name recognition plus a lot of fan love and popularity. The challenge is to try and create a vision that appeals to the fans while also translating the books into films in such a way that it will easily appeal to the wider population outside of those fans and it can be a tricky process. In this Drunk Duck community webcomic podcast Banes and I discuss some of the pitfalls, cases when it's been done right, wrong, and extra-special!
Episode 120 - Kevin Hayman EXTRA
Apr 8, 2013
Kevin Hayman is STILL Owen Wilson. In Quackcast 120 we have the extra bits that were nice and funny and reasonably webcomic focused still so we made another Quackcast out of it! We had LOTs of fun.There was a bit of salacious gossip that we had to cut out and some swearing, so there are some weird little non-sequitur bits in there, sorry about that!Anyway, Kevin is the creator of Kota's World, Mailbox Rocketship and Errant Apprentice as well as the the great pop-culture focussed podcast DTWC (drawing the wrong conclusions)! MEET KEVIN!- Free comic book day at 3 Alarm comics on the 4th of May in Biloxi in Mississippi. If you’re in that part of Mississippi or Louisiana close to that area you should go on over and get some comics from there, meet Kevin and Zac who also does great comics and some pro Marvel and DC comic book artists as well!
Quackcast 119 - Kevin Kota's World Hayman
Apr 1, 2013
Owen Wilson. Owen Wilson. Owen Wilson: Kevin Hayman IS Owen Wilson, only better looking and twice as talented. Listen find out for yourself. Kevin is a really interesting guy, he's been doing webcomics since they were a thing. His Kota's World ran from 2000-2005 (and a bit before that), it was one of the first comics on the old days of Drunk Duck! He's since moved on from that, now drawing both the very popular Errant Apprentice and the new reinvented version of Kota's World "Mailbox Rocketship", as well as working hard as the co-host of the great pop-culture focussed podcast DTWC (drawing the wrong conclusions), which is the successor to The Gigcast, which was the old unofficial podcast for Drunk Duck back in the day. Lots of history here people. History and talent! Kevin is an amazing guy and hard to contain within a single broadcast so next week we'll have part two of our little chat, as soon as I edit out all the swearing an salacious gossip (I am not joking).
Episode 109 - Tantzface and Pit Aerine Quacktet TAG TEAM
Jan 21, 2013
Ozone and Banes are joined by some of our most fave recurring guests Tantz Aerine and Pit Face, to form... The Quacktet! The Quacktet talk about characters, writing and all the things that can go wrong and right with character development, both in story writing and in visual design. Things went a BIT awry and this was our THIRD attempt at doing a Quackcast that eveneing, to top it off I was quite ill at the time too, with a bucket by my side... Tantz says "NO" a lot, we learn that characters need proper discipline (it turns out spanking just isn't enough), we talk about Pit Face working on a new collaborative community project, and Tantz Aerine fighting the good fight as a hero of the modern Greek political resistance.We apologise for getting a little bit silly.
